Journal Article

AntLP: ant-based label propagation algorithm for community detection in social networks

Hosseini, Razieh, Rezvanian, Alireza

2020

Overview

In social network analysis, community detection is one of the significant tasks to study the structure and characteristics of the networks. In recent years, several intelligent and meta-heuristic algorithms have been presented for community detection in complex social networks, among them label propagation algorithm (LPA) is one of the fastest algorithms for discovering community structures. However, due to the randomness of the LPA, its performance is not suitable for the general purpose of network analysis. In this study, the authors propose an improved version of the label propagation (called AntLP) algorithm using similarity indices and ant colony optimisation (ACO). The AntLP consists of two steps: in the first step, the algorithm assigns weights for edges of the input network using several similarity indices, and in the second step, the AntLP using ACO tries to propagate labels and optimise modularity measure by grouping similar vertices in each community based on the local similarities among the vertices of the network. In order to study the performance of the AntLP, several experiments are conducted on some well-known social network datasets. Experimental simulations demonstrated that the AntLP is better than some community detection algorithms for social networks in terms of modularity, normalised mutual information and running time.

• Publisher: The Institution of Engineering and Technology,John Wiley & Sons, Inc,Wiley
• Subject: Algorithms / ant colony optimisation / Ant colony optimization / ant-based label propagation algorithm / AntLP / Apexes / C1180 Optimisation techniques / C7210N Information networks / Clustering / Community / Community detection / community detection algorithms / community structures / complex networks / complex social networks / Cooperative learning / Graph theory / Heuristic methods / intelligent algorithms / Labels / LPA / meta-heuristic algorithms / Methods / Modularity / Network analysis / Propagation / Random walk theory / Research Article / Seeds / Similarity / similarity indices / Social network analysis / social network datasets / social networking (online) / Social networks / Task complexity